February 2017 Quotations (60)

"The darkest day. The blackest hour. Chin up, shoulders back. Let's see what we're made of, you and I."
~~ 12th Doctor Who

"[If] Trump’s plan for managing his businesses while he’s in the Oval Office . . . doesn’t amount to premeditated corruption, it certainly paves the way for it."
~~ columnist Richard Eskow, in January 2017

“Yes, books are dangerous. They should be dangerous – they contain ideas.”
~~ Pete Hautman

"In the [XXth] century, more Americans died in murders than in wars."
~~ columnist L.M. Boyd [1927-2007]

"A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]

“It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?”
~~ Henry David Thoreau [1817-62]

"If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves."
~~ Thomas Alva Edison [1847-1931]

"Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness. Listen to it carefully."
~~ author-aviator Richard Bach

"Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter."
~~ Nikola Tesla [1856-1943]

"Fighting crime? Crime fights back!"
~~ line in the "Tick" TV series, 2001

"The future is today - Worry about it tomorrow."
~~ motto of "Futurama" TV series

"There is a time to laugh and a time not to laugh, and this is not one of them."
~~ Inspector Jacques Clouseau, star of "The Pink Panther" Movies

“And once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”
~~ Haruki Murakami, in the 2002 novel "Kafka On The Shore"

"Great books help you understand, and they help you feel understood."
~~ John Green

"Why hasn't [president-elect Trump] been given more respect? Here's a fair answer: He hasn't earned any."
~~ Dana Milbank, Washington Post columnist

"Writing is dreaming with your eyes open."
~~ author Dave Burns

"I'll never guess the number of buttons in a jar ever again – not ever!"
~~ B.O. Plenty character in the 'Dick Tracy' comic strip (view the panel}

"If you change the way [that] you look at things, the things [that] you look at change."
~~ Dr. Wayne W. Dyer [1940-2015]

"The only sense that is common in the long run, is the sense of change and we all instinctively avoid it."
~~ E.B. White [1899-1985]

“Humor is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign tongue.”
~~ British author Virginia Woolf [1882-1941]

re Trump's 'Alternative Facts': "The Party told you to reject all evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."
~~ from the 1949 novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four" by George Orwell [1903-50]

"A word after a word after a word is power."
~~ Margaret Atwood

"[President Trump] does not have a running war with the media, he has a running war with reality."
~~ Keith Olberman, G.Q. TV

"Resist the demogogue D.J.T."
~~ Joe Kensil

"We don't want equal injustice for all."
~~ Kevin Alexander Gray

“In a democracy, the individual enjoys not only the ultimate power but carries the ultimate responsibility.”
~~ writer-activist Norman Cousins [1915-90]

"Romance is everything."
~~ Gertrude Stein [1874-1946]

"In fiction, believability may have nothing to do with reality or even plausibility. It has everything to do with those things in nonfiction. I think that the nonfiction writer's fundamental job is to make what is true believable."
~~ non-fiction writer Tracy Kidder

"Our delusions own us. We can never truly break free from them."
~~ line in "Mr. Robot" TV series

"The geeks have inherited the Earth. The rest of you just don't know it yet."
~~ line from "Algorithm: The Hacker Movie" [2014] by Jon Schiefer

"Obamacare hysteria [by the Republican Party] was never anything other than racial hatred [disguised] as a policy dispute."
~~ The Pen at Peace Team activism website

"Statistics are at their most powerful when they surprise us."
~~ Alan Smith, U.K. journalist

"Sometimes even to live is an act of courage."
~~ Seneca the Younger [4? B.C.E. - 65 A.D.]

"The universe [simply] came into existence all by itself."
~~ physicist Stephen W. Hawking

“Winners lose much more often than losers. So if you keep losing but you’re still trying, keep it up! You’re right on track.”
~~ Matthew Keith Groves

“A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him.”
~~ Sidney Greenberg [1917-2003]

"Die when I may, I want it said by those who knew me best that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow."
~~ Abraham Lincoln [1809-65]

"An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it."
~~ Mahatma Gandhi [1869-1948]

"Conformists die, but heretics live forever."
~~ Elbert Hubbard [1856-1915]

"Each man has his own vocation: His talent is his call."
~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-82]

"In the halls of politics and power, most economists are like wallpaper – full of intricate details but ultimately decoration."
~~ journalist Bill Saporito

"Man is the one animal that can't be tamed."
~~ Robert A. Heinlein [1907-88]

"Talk is cheap – except when Congress does it."
~~ Ronald Reagan [1911-2004]

"There are no rules. That's the first hundred rules. As for the hundred and first rule, I haven't figured that out yet."
~~ Werner Erhard

"If you do not breathe thru writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it."
~~ Anaïs Nin [1903-77]

"One of the greatest discoveries [that] a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find [that] he can do what he was afraid he couldn't do."
~~ Henry Ford [1863-1947]

"There is never enough good writing to go around."
~~ Raymond Chandler [1888-1959]

"There are uncertain truths – even true statements that we may take to be false – but there are no uncertain certainties. Since we can never know anything for sure, it is simply not worth searching for certainty; but it is well worth searching for truth; and we do this chiefly by searching for mistakes, so that we have to correct them."
~~ philosopher Karl Popper [1902-94] in "In Search of A Better World" [1984]

"I think [that] in literature the writer must be a radical. The insight that guides the work must go the limit of felt thought, and then beyond."
~~ Vivian Gornick

"The success of a [vacation] depends on what you find for yourself on the spot, not what you bring with you."
~~ mystery author Ellis Peters [1913-95]

"Ain't no money in poetry / That's what sets the poet free"
~~ Gary Clark, lyric of song "Cold Dog Soup"

"What is this life, if full of care / we have no time to stand and stare"
~~ Welsh poet W.H. Davies [1871-1940]

"Only Irish coffee provides in a single glass all four essential food groups: alcohol, caffeine, sugar, and fat."
~~ Alex Levine

"I believe the future is simply the past, entered thru another gate."
~~ Miguel Piñero [1946-88]

"Art is making something out of nothing and selling it."
~~ musician Frank Zappa [1940-93]

"Interest in life is the very best form of wealth."
~~ Erle Stanley Gardner [1889-1970]

"Vigorous writing is concise."
~~ William Strunk, Jr. [1869-1946]

"He who establishes his argument by noise and command, shows that his reason is weak."
~~ essayist Michel De Montaigne [1533-92]

"We are all born originals. Why is it so many of us die copies?"
~~ poet Edward Young [1683-1765]

"If you are afraid of being lonely, don’t try to be right."
~~ French author Jules Renard [1864-1910]

{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}